Rebuilding Gaza: The back of the Gazan economy has been broken

[Jefferson23]

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What will become of the Gaza Strip? The American academic Sara Roy doubts that there is a future for Gaza and its inhabitants following the recent Israeli offensive. Bettina Marx has the details

"Everything is different this time," says Sara Roy. This time, she says, the Gaza Strip cannot simply be rebuilt; the wounds of this last war could prove too severe to heal. The 1.8 million inhabitants of this thin coastal region have no hope of any immediate improvement of their situation following this summer's Israeli military offensive known as "Protective Edge".

As a result, for the first time in recent history, a true exodus is taking place. Hundreds of Palestinians have already fled the Gaza Strip. They have been smuggled through tunnels under the border to Egypt where they have boarded ships to cross the Mediterranean. "People are simply leaving. They are fleeing from the intolerable conditions in Gaza," says the Boston academic.

Just the other week, a ship with 500 passengers, many of them Palestinians from Gaza, sunk off the coast of Malta. "This has never happened before," stresses Roy. "Even in the worst of times, people never considered abandoning the Gaza Strip." Now, however, Palestinians from all social strata and all political camps are leaving. Even members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad are sending their children abroad to give them the chance of a better future.

http://en.qantara.de/content/rebuilding-gaza-the-back-of-the-gazan-economy-has-been-broken

[PDJane]

1. And this is what Israel has been aiming for.

The whole shoot-to-kill, mow the lawn, kill our own, blow up buildings, punish the Palestinians for daring to breathe policy has been meant to do just this. The west bank is going to be simply absorbed by the settlements.

It's obscene, and US policies helped it happen. An entire people will lose their homes and their identities for the ambitions of a racist, colonialist, and non-democratic, religious-based state.

They are not going to pay for ignoring the Geneva conventions.